The original name of the project, mswordview,
was uncomfortably close to Microsoft's own product named
wordview,
so the library was renamed.

wv is a library which allows access to Microsoft Word files. It
can load and parse Word 2000, 97, 95 and 6 file formats. (These are
the file formats known internally as Word 9, 8, 7 and 6.) There is
some support for reading earlier formats as well: Word 2 docs are
converted to plaintext.

wv allows other programs access to Word documents for the
purpose of converting them to other formats. It is currently being
used by AbiWord as its Word
importer, and concepts and bits of code are being used by the KDE
folks over at KWord in
their word importer.

Provided with the wv distribution is an application called
wvWare. wvWare is a "power-user" application with lots
of command-line options, doo-dads, bells, and whistles. Less
interesting, but more convenient, are the helper scripts that use
wvWare. These are: